


My Shangri-La Beneath the Summer Moon

by Tesserae



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Time, M/M, Road Trips, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-12
Updated: 2011-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:49:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tesserae/pseuds/Tesserae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winchesters don't take vacations. It says so right here in the manual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Shangri-La Beneath the Summer Moon

“Hell of a drive,” Dean says. They’d just gotten into Bobby’s the night before, dropped their gear on the floor and fallen down after it, and he hadn’t even had a chance to shower. Now Sam wants to spend another 24 hours in the car?

“Yep.” Sam thumps his way across the porch and drops down to sit beside Dean on the steps. He hands over a mug of coffee and lifts his face to the weak sunshine, scrubbing a hand over a chin that’s gone past stubble and into full-on beard. His hair is longer than he usually lets it get, too, curling in dark waves around his neck.

They both need a shave and a haircut the other one hasn’t given them in the fluorescent light of a motel bathroom, and Dean wants to change the oil in the Impala and maybe run her up on the hoist. She’d complained more than usual on the road leading into Sioux Falls and he wants to give her the $100 lube job this time, better that than risk a --

An elbow to the ribs pulls him back from his enjoyable contemplation of the Impala’s transmission. Sam is talking again, and it’s clear from the weight behind the blow that Dean’s expected to say something at some point. Since he has no idea what it needs to be, he yawns elaborately and starts at what he hopes is the beginning. “Dude, why Arizona?”

Sam narrows his eyes. “It’s no big deal, I guess. Bobby can call someone else.” He shifts back to lean against the wall. “You got any plans today?” he asks brightly, as if the answer he’s expecting involves a barbecue and a twelve pack.

It’s Dean’s turn to give his brother the hairy eyeball, and he does. He’s pretty sure Sam’s faking the “no big deal” part but reasonably sure Sam’ll still be here in the morning if Dean refuses to go. They haven’t been more than twenty yards away from each other in the last few weeks, and the one time Dean made some excuse and escaped their motel room for the dubious charms of the local roadhouse, it hadn’t taken Sam a half hour to discover a sudden need for a beer.

So he doesn’t think Sam would take off by himself, not anymore, and not that he’d let Sam hunt alone anyways. Unfortunately, they’re _it_ when it comes to the western half of the continent - between the Not!pocalypse body count and Eve’s little killing spree, they’ll be able to hold the next Hunter’s All-Class Reunion in the men’s room of a White Castle. As Dean figures it, that situation, if not entirely their fault, makes any local bad guys their problem. So, however much he wants to spend the next week lounging around Bobby’s, working on the car and not killing anything, if Sam wants to go, they’re going.

“Nah, man, it’s okay,” he says, and when Sam beams at him, Dean toasts him with his coffee cup. “The fuck’s in Arizona anyways?”

“It’s pretty cool, actually,” and just like that, Sam is back into the story that Dean tuned out earlier. This time, he catches _jail_ and _hill_ and _ghost_ and a bunch of other things too random to follow - clearly, Sam was having his Wheaties in front of Bobby’s internet connection while Dean was still trying to get both eyes to stay open simultaneously. Dean hitches his ass across the step and leans back against Sam, who huffs a laugh and drapes an arm over him without missing a beat.

Above them, clouds are piling up in the vast blue sky. Dean wonders if they might bring rain, but he’s never been very good at that whole weather-predicting thing. Too much moving around, no time to get used to anybody’s weather, and besides, isn’t that what radios are for?

Above his head, he hears a faint laugh, and Sam’s hand tightens on his shoulder. “You’ll like Jerome,” Sam murmurs, and Dean frowns. He can’t think of any hunters named Jerome. He’ll leave that part of it up to Sam.

*

An hour later they’re ready to go. Sam’d talked him into taking a shower and ran a load of wash, and Bobby tossed them a fresh credit card. Dean pats the Impala’s hood when they climb back into her, apologizes for not giving her time to freshen up and tells her the oil change’ll be even sweeter if she can wait another couple days. Sam rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything.

Dean gets them through Kansas, then slides over and sleeps most of the way through New Mexico, takes the wheel after Albuquerque the next day, and sometime around nightfall, fights his way up the narrow switchbacked road that leads into Jerome, Arizona.

Jerome’s main street looks like a Frontier Village theme park. He pulls to a stop in front of the one place in town without a hitching post or a fancy street lamp out front, hoping the room doesn’t run to pictures of Billy the Kid or, worse, Clint Eastwood. Because that would be _sacrilege._ “So, Jerome’s not a hunter,” he says to Sam.

“What?” Sam snorts himself awake and makes a sneaky motion with his right hand that probably means he’s been drooling on the window.

“Jerome. I thought Jerome was, you know, another –“

“Another one of Samuel’s boys?” Sam’s voice drops into Tom Waits territory and Dean throws him a sharp look.

“What the fuck? No – some old bandmate of Bobby’s, didn’t you say it was a friend who called?”

Dean kills the engine and fishes through the glove box looking for his wallet. The motel’s tiny, half a dozen cabins scattered around a gravel parking lot and a concrete pad off to one side with a picnic table and a grill chained to a post. Inside the motel’s office, a woman is methodically eating something out of a bowl, her eyes glued to a 42” flat screen. Dean can see sequins and hair gel through the Impala’s bug-spattered windshield.

Maybe this trip won’t be a total washout, if they’ve got HD. He puts the Campbells out of his mind and turns to Sam. “Dude, I bet–“

“They’re all dead,” Sam says flatly. “Samuel’s boys. They’re all dead.”

And yeah, Dean knew that already. He’d been viciously glad to watch them die, and while T1000 wouldn’t have cared one way or the other, Sam obviously still feels bad about the whole sorry thing.

Dean makes a frustrated noise and climbs out of the car, leaving Sam sitting there with a frown knotting his forehead into what looks like a killer headache, and pushes his way into the office. He hands over the credit card and five minutes late the volume’s back up on the flat screen and Dean’s got the key to the last cabin on the left.

Sam’s shoulders are tight when he hoists his duffle out of the car. Dean’s kicking himself for even bringing it up and trying to remind himself he’d _wanted_ this version of Sammy back, corrosive guilt and all, but when he fits the key into the lock and swings the door open, all thoughts of – well, really _anything_ leave his head abruptly.

Sam steps around him into the room and comes to an abrupt stop. “Dean,” he breathes.

Dean blinks. “I call dibs on the, er…, one on the left.” He starts across the room to drop his bag onto a bed that looks like it came out of Bam-Bam’s room in the live action version of the Flintstones. Which, fittingly, leaves Sam to sleep in Pebbles’ bed.

“Oh, you are not,” Sam says, and races around him to throw himself onto the bed before Dean can get there. He’s got a point – Bam-Bam’s bed is bigger than Pebbles’ – but Dean’s not about to give in without a fight. The Impala wouldn’t understand, he tells himself, and throws himself onto his brother.

It’s over pretty much before it starts. Sam’s disturbingly strong, and before he can process the impulse that put him there, Dean finds himself flipped over, arms stretched out and each wrist pinned under one of Sam’s enormous hands. He shifts, trying to get enough traction to push Sam off, but Sam flexes one knee and locks him in place.

“Dean,” he says, sounding determined. The dim light paints shadows under his eyes and hollows his cheeks until Dean can see the bones beneath the flesh.

He freezes.

Sam searches his face for a moment, then continues. “I’m not sorry Samuel’s dead, or the rest of them. It was all wrong, Dean, I was all wrong, I remember – fuck, I _don’t_ remember, but I know that much.” He pauses, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “I wish I could remember, it’d make fixing all the shit I broke a hell of a lot easier.”

“Probably better to leave it alone, Sammy. It’s anything like the rest of our lives it’ll find us soon enough.” He shifts restlessly. Sam weighs something north of two hundred pounds and all of them feel like they’re balanced on Dean’s chest. “Dude, you think you could move?”

Sam pulls his head back and looks down at Dean, eyes moving from one trapped wrist to the other before settling on the pulse Dean can feel beating in his own throat. Heat starts to build in his belly, wrapping tendrils of arousal around his spine, and the room goes suddenly airless as something sparks between them.

Sam’s eye go wide in response. “I don’t know, you look pretty comfortable to me,” he drawls, but rolls halfway off, letting Dean’s wrists go and settling onto an elbow. He leaves one long thigh pressed between Dean’s legs, its bulk heavy and intimate. “Dean –“ he starts to say, and brings one hand up to hover over Dean’s face.

And Dean, who could still remember the exact moment ten years earlier when _needing Sam_ turned into _wanting Sam_ , who’d spent what felt like every minute of the last year _craving_ Sam with a hunger that went all the way into the bones Castiel had brought back from Hell, chickens out. This is his brother, he reminds himself desperately. Never mind that it’s a brother who’s currently stretched above him, the startling weight of his erection pressed into Dean’s own.

“Okay, fine, you can be Bam-Bam,” he says, trying to pull them both back to safer ground. Sam doesn’t always know what he wants, after all, and Dean’s positive he doesn’t want to be on the other side of Sam changing his mind. Not about this. He lets himself go limp and shifts his gaze to a point somewhere over Sam’s shoulder. Unfortunately, that point is the shower curtain, where large purple dinosaurs appear to be having carnal knowledge of smaller yellow ones.

He shudders, waving a hand toward the bathroom. “Dude, not here. I’ll never be able to watch cartoons again.” Port, storm, he thinks, and puts on a smile he hopes isn’t too cheesy.

Sam’s face shuts down, and with a complicated move he rolls off the other side of the bed, clears the room in three long strides and hauls the door open. Dean bites back a groan. He’d forgotten that in Sam’s mind, Sam _always_ knows what he wants. “Sammy, wait.”

Sam shakes his head and, without looking back at Dean, makes what looks like a well-practiced exit.

Dean drops back onto the bed and gazes up at the plastic stars littering the ceiling. “No good ever came of anyone trying to get laid in a theme park,” he tells them, and then cracks a smile, a real one.

Sammy was – Sammy was trying to get _laid_. Whatever Dean wants to call this thing between them, Sam’s right there with him. And being Sam, he’s decided to do something about it.

“Fuck, Sammy. You couldn’t have started with a six-pack, you know? Maybe a rerun of _Die Hard_? Woo a guy?”

*

In the morning, Jerome turns out to be the kind of quaint little town Dean associates with souvenir dried rattlesnakes and four year olds in cowboy costumes, and the ghost turns out to be not one ghost but six, miners killed in a cave-in when they dynamited the copper lode that sent the jail sliding down the hill in the 1920s. There’d been an unspecified amount of whiskey involved, according to the article Sam’s reading.

 _Demolition under the influence._ Dean likes it.

“So, what,” he says to Sam, “these guys didn’t want to become condos? They still buried under the slide?” Fortunately, Jerome’s also the kind of quaint that runs to all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets, and Dean’s happily plowed his way through enough pork products to put the fear of god into Jimmy Dean.

“Nah, they all got moved to the cemetery. Still pissed, though, I guess.” Sam gives up on the pancakes he’s been picking at and shoves the plate aside. “Look – says here they broke ground a month ago but it’s been raining too much to start digging the foundations. Three days ago they started for real, and the site foreman was killed that night.”

Dean pulls the paper closer. The smiling face of one Jim Bosun stares up at him, frozen forever at the controls of a backhoe. “This the thing that took him out?”

“Yep.” The story was simple enough: late in the day, as the excavation got closer and closer to the base of the hill where the miners died, they’d started having trouble with the equipment. Finally, one of the drivers put the backhoe ass-first into the hole, bailing out of the cab at the last second and swearing he hadn’t touched the controls. Pissed, Bosun shut down work for the day, then found some reason – the reporter didn’t say what – to return to the site.

“At which point the backhoe decided it felt better and went looking for a snack?” Dean was skeptical. They’d seen plenty of haunted objects, and a ghost truck nearly took out the Impala once, but backhoes hadn’t even been invented back when their probable ghosts bought it. “You sure we aren’t looking for somebody who died, say, less than 100 years ago?”

“It’s possible. But I spent a couple hours online last night and –“

“Where’d you go?” It comes out more sharply than he intends. Sam had blown back into the motel room with coffee and newspapers but no explanations sometime shortly after dawn, and Dean’s been waiting for something that felt like an opening to ask the question.

Sam glances down at his cup, pushes it toward the edge of the table and waves at the waitress. “More coffee?” he mouths, before turning back and meeting Dean’s eyes. “All-night coffeehouse down the street. Couldn’t sleep, thought I’d do a little research. Dean, I--”

The waitress glides over to fill both their cups and lingers next to Sam until he throws her a grateful smile and asks for a glass of orange juice. The orange juice is delivered in a cloud of fruity perfume that’s almost gone by the time she returns to drop the check onto the table. Dean picks it up and waves it at his brother. It’s got her phone number on it, in vaguely heart-shaped digits.

Sam rolls his eyes. “At least I use my powers for good,” he mutters.

They pay the bill and Sam leaves the girl’s number behind. Dean jams it down firmly onto the steel pin by the register, flushing a little when Sam catches him at it. Sam just smirks, though, and climbs into the Impala as if something’s been settled between them.

He’s still pondering when Sam punches him lightly in the thigh and says, “Dude! I call dibs on the burn!” and if he doesn’t sound happy just yet, Dean can hear the start of it in his voice. He twists the key in the ignition and the car rumbles to life with a relieved sound beneath his hands, as if she’s happy, too, that Dean’s finally getting it right.

 

They end up waiting until nightfall, but after a fuckload of rock salt, two cans of gasoline and most of Grand Funk Railroad’s _American Band_ the ghosts – the six original ones, their graves helpfully mapped out by the town’s historical museum, plus one of them’s great grandson (“fucking wannabees,” Dean says, and Sam laughs, a little grimly) – are finally smoked. Dean’s on the verge of asking Sam if he wants to head back to South Dakota tonight or wait until morning when Sam spreads a map out on the roof of the Impala and shines the flashlight on a spot about two inches north of where they are.

Dean peers at it, but all he recognizes are the words “Kingman” and “Route 66,” and he gives Sam a quizzical look. “You want to drive to California?” he asks.

“Dude, what?”

“ _Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino_? Route 66?” He’d rather go back to Bobby’s and work on the Impala, but if Sam wants to go to California -- “I don’t know why you want to go to Barstow, though.”

“Barstow? Fuck, no. What does Barstow have to do with anything?” Sam says, tapping the map. “Look, Dean.”

Dean pulls out another flashlight and peers at the map, but there’s nothing but a thin meandering line there. He turns the light on Sam instead and stares, fascinated, as a blush creeps up Sam’s neck. “Sammy?”

Sam ducks his head and gives the map a fierce look. When he finally answers, his voice low, Dean can hardly hear him over the roar of the wind in the trees behind them. “It’s the Grand Canyon, Dean. We drive to Flagstaff tonight, we can finally go see the Grand Canyon in the morning.”

*

It’s too late to check out of the motel when they get back – the office is locked, no lights on except for a faint blue glow from the flat screen seeping through a gap in the drapes – so Dean leaves the key on the dresser in the room and pulls the door closed. Even if the motel charges his card for a second night, he reasons, Richie Sambora can afford it. Sam throws their duffels into the trunk and slams it, points out the shortcut to the highway, and that’s it for haunted backhoes: the Winchester brothers are back on the road.

Or back on the –“How fucking steep is this fucking goat path they call a road, Sam?” Sam peers out the window obediently, winces, and thirty white-knuckled minutes later, they’re down off the hill Jerome is perched on. Dean pulls over at the first decent shoulder he sees, crunching the wheels over gravel, and pats the Impala’s dash.

Sam grins, a flash of teeth in the faint light from the dash, and mimes wiping sweat off his brow.

“Bitch,” Dean says amiably. “Where to now?”

“Keep going north. We should hit Flag in about two hours.” Sam sounds hesitant, and Dean’s about to object – they can make it past Flagstaff, no problem – but he also sounds _tired_ , and yeah, heading for the world’s largest hole in the ground in the middle of the night after an epic salt and burn qualifies as stupid, even for two guys who’ve never let that stop them before.

Bed it is, then, and two hours later, like Sam promised, they’re on the outskirts of Flagstaff. Judging by the businesses that line the highway, it’s a town devoted entirely to fast food joints and auto parts stores.

Maybe Sam’d been onto something that time he ran away and ended up here. Too bad they’re only staying one night. He picks the motel least likely to offer theme rooms and when he gets back into the car, Sam’s awake, watching him through slitted eyes.

“All good?”

Dean nods. “Richie Sambora may have sucky taste in lead singers but his credit’s golden.”

*

The room is refreshingly normal. Dean’s actually happy to see that the remote control is bolted to the bedside table. He tosses his duffel onto the bed closest to the door and gives his brother an assessing look. Sam looks like someone who’d just – well, who’d just dug seven graves. “You want dibs on the shower?” he asks.

Sam makes a face. “For the next hour, I think, yeah.” He unzips his own bag and fishes out a clean t-shirt and boxers, and lays them neatly on the bed. “This place got room service?”

“I’ll go rustle up a --” Dean starts to say, but with a clean sharp movement Sam hauls his jacket and shirts over his head, and the rest of the sentence dies in his throat. Sam drops his shirts to the floor and turns his attention to his belt. Dean watches as his brother slides the narrow strip of leather free and drops it onto the bed. A flick of his wrists and then the sound of the zipper, impossibly loud as the heating unit shuts off abruptly, and Sam’s jeans and boxers slide to the ground.

“—pizza,” Dean finally grunts. There is more _acreage_ to Sam than there used to be, somehow, fucking _hectares_ of smooth unblemished skin, and when did Sam get so damn _cut_?

“Dean!” Sam steps out of his jeans, sounding faintly embarrassed.

Dean leers at him. “Just checkin’ to see if your tat’s still good,” he says. “You never know.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Sam cranes his head to look at the ink high on one pec and shrugs. “I’m surprised it survived, actually.” He nods his head toward the bathroom. “If I’m not out in an hour, come get me,” he says, and heads for the shower.

Dean waits until he hears the water running, fights down the urge to see what Sam’ll do if he tries to join him, and slips out the door. Beer, dinner, more beer, he’s thinking. Whatever’s about to happen will be easier if he stuffs them both full of carbohydrates, animal fat and PBR first.

The only place open is a decrepit Pizza Hut half a mile down the road. Dean drives past it at first, suspicious of the birthday greetings falling off its sign one letter at a time, but other than the all-night gas station advertising two-for-one corn dogs, it’s the only one with its lights on. And Sam’ll bitch at him if he comes back with corn dogs.

Dean pushes his way into the restaurant. A funk of cheese and pepperoni and garlic hits him, and even the teenager rolling her eyes toward the clock over the door and scowling at him can’t wipe the grin off his face.

“Hi darlin’! You got any two for one specials going?” He ladles on the smarm, and she snaps her gum at him irritably until he slides a ten across the counter. “Two large pepperoni pizzas, one with vegetables. The ten’s yours if I get them in fifteen minutes.”

She slides the bill into her pocket like a pro. “What kinda vegetables?” she asks, long green nails poised over the keyboard.

“Green ones,” Dean says. “Red ones. Does it matter?” He’d tried to explain to Sam once that he _did_ eat his vegetables, he’d had a Vegetarian Special just a month earlier. Sam had rolled his eyes, so Dean figured that since none of the stuff on pizzas qualified as vegetables in Sam’s really-too-long book anyways, who cared which ones you ordered?

The cash register beeps. The teenager frowns at him and taps at its keys. “Two for one,” she says. “Huh.”

“And a Coke,” Dean adds, and when she gives it to him, he carries it over to a table by the TV and watches a bunch of dirty-looking people in bathing suits try to build a hut. Before he can figure out what they’re doing, his pizzas are ready. He – or rather, Richie Sambora – pays the bill, and as he swings around to push the door open, he sees the teenager fish the ten he’d given her out of her pocket and gaze at it, her pink-lipsticked mouth falling open.

Turns out, he’d have gotten farther milking the Bon Jovi angle back at the Pizza Hut – when he finally manages to get the room key into the door without dropping either the pizzas or the six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon balanced on top of them, Sam’s fast asleep, face down on the bedspread with a pile of pillows next to his head and a towel still wrapped around his narrow hips.

Dean puts the pizzas on the dresser and reaches around the corner to flick on the bathroom light. He unties his boots and toes them off before tiptoeing across the room to pull the bedspread off his bed. Sam’s gonna get cold trying to sleep that way, he reasons; as a kid, Sam had always been the one to bitch about being cold and curl himself up against Dean’s back. Once or twice, he’d woke up from a dream of being choked to death to find his father pulling Sam’s arms loose from their stranglehold on his neck.

He drapes the spread over his brother and leans down to tuck it in around his outflung arms, and then stands for a moment by the bed, watching the steady fall and rise of Sam’s back as he breathes. He reaches down to rest his hand on the back of Sam’s neck, the pad of his thumb flush against the vein beating time in the hollow of Sam’s collarbone. Sam murmurs and stirs, pushing back into the weight of it, and Dean tightens his hand for a moment.

 _Sam_ , he thinks, and stands up to check and see if Sam left him any hot water.

*

The next morning he makes Sam go get four cups of coffee from the McDonald’s across the street while he loads their shit into the Impala. Sam hands him the tray of coffee cups and brandishes a bag at him when he gets back. The bag smells vaguely like sausage. Dean grabs it.

“—dude, you brought me an Egg McMuffin!”

“And a cinnamon roll, jerk. Hand me the other egg thing while you’re in there.”

“No granola?”

Sam grimaces. “It looked green - I think they swapped it out for Lucky Charms while the leprechaun was counting the salt.” Dean hands over the second sandwich and leans back against the car, and after a while Sam comes over and settles in against him.

“Thanks for letting me sleep last night.” Sam had merely shuddered when Dean offered him a slice of cold pizza and one of the last two beers for breakfast. He’d managed to keep the rest of his opinion to himself, but hadn’t bitched – much – when Dean pointed toward McD’s.

“You were out cold – Balthazar coulda sent us to Woodstock to score weed and hang with Jimi Hendrix and you wouldn’t a woken up.”

“I hate Hendrix,” Sam says mildly. “You ready to go?”

Dean nods. There’s a sudden flurry of activity in the parking lot as a car swings into the driveway and lets out four older women in jeans and sweatshirts. The women bypass the office and trudge toward a door marked _Housekeeping_ , their voices loud in the clear morning air. He hopes one of them takes the uneaten pizzas. “What do you think - take us a couple hours to get up there?” He crumples the Egg McMuffin wrappers into a greasy wad and pitches them toward a trash can.

“Yeah.” Sam leans into the car to fish a map out of the glove compartment. He spreads it out on the roof and points toward a road that loops around before stretching north from where they are. “Here’s the road we want to take.”

“It looks like the only road,” Dean says.

“Pretty much. It’ll take us up to the south rim, just here.”

Another jab at the map, and sure enough, it says “Grand Canyon Village” where the road ends. He looks at Sam curiously. “You ever get up there when you lived here?” They never talk about Sam’s time in Flagstaff. Dean hadn’t asked, frantic to get his little brother back before Dad noticed either of them were gone, and hadn’t let Sam start, either, not wanting to know why Sam looked so damn happy when he first opened the door to his little shack.

“Nope, no car.” Sam ducks his head and pretends to study the map.

Leaving Sam in Flagstaff with his dog and his Funyons might have butterflied the Apocalypse but Dean’s pretty sure it wouldn’t have stopped any of the rest of the shit that’s been coming their way since he carried Sam out of a burning bedroom all those years ago. And there’s no guarantee he’d have ever gotten Sam _back_ from whatever normal life Sam imagined himself leading. Now, though – now Sam’s here, all six foot five inches and too-long hair of him, and if Dean had spent most of the night awake and listening to him snore it’s not something he’ll ever bitch about again.

He snorts - _well, mostly not_ \- and Sam looks up with a grin that catches at the corners of his eyes and tightens his dimples, and for a moment Dean can’t breathe for the weightlessness of it all.

He reaches out, lets his hand curve around the point of Sam’s jaw. Sam turns into the touch and the grin widens, turns into a full-body smile as bright as the magnesium blue of the sky stretching out over the pine trees. “Sam,” he rasps, and Sam leans in and presses his mouth to Dean’s. It’s brief, too brief, just a warm brush of lips and a promise, and then he’s pulling back, flushed and serious.

“Dude, I can hear you thinking from here,” he says. “Whatever it is, it can wait. We got a Grand Canyon to see.”

*

It took them two days to get from South Dakota to Arizona but Dean will swear until his dying day that the drive from Flagstaff to the south rim of the Grand Canyon takes three days, or maybe four, with an extra half-day thrown in for peeling his hands off the wheel once they stop, since it was either get a death grip on the worn plastic of the Impala’s steering wheel or give in to the overpowering urge he’d had to pull the car off the road, haul Sam into the back seat and –

“Dean.”

Dean realizes it’s the second time Sam’s said his name. “Yeah.” He flexes his fingers, switches off the ignition. Duane Allmann wails to a stop and the engine ticks over in the silence.

“We’re here,” Sam says, unnecessarily.

Dean can see the vista of the canyon, impossibly large and mistily pink, a parking lot away. He drops his hands down on his thighs, feeing the muscles jump beneath his palms. He tightens his fingers until his knuckles go white. Next to him, Sam looks equally tense, rolling his shoulders in the too-small space of the car. “You wanna –“ his voice strangles and dies in his throat as Sam puts his hand on the door handle.

“Yeah,” Sam says, and steps out of the car. “I wanna. But I wanna see the canyon first.”

And the canyon’s right _there_ , weirdly, one of the seven fucking wonders of the world and there’s nothing between it and them but a hundred yards of asphalt, a couple of trees and a little stone wall. Sam walks right up to the edge and steps up onto the wall and stands there staring, his long hair blowing a little in the clear dry air.

“Wasn’t this where Mom and Dad --?” he points toward the west, and Dean shrugs.

“Yeah, something like that. They were coming in from Lake Mead, I think Dad said once.” He forces himself to peer into the canyon and tugs on Sam to get him down from the ledge. It’s a long ways down to the river half-hidden on the canyon floor, a mile or more of rock and scrub and tourists on horseback, and Dean knows from his father’s story that the river itself runs colder and faster and deeper than it looks. It nearly killed John and Mary that year, the spring before Sam was born; Dean’s never told anyone, but he’s always found that story more terrifying than any wendigo. There’s nothing in Bobby’s study or the trunk of the Impala that they can throw at motherfucking Nature herself to make her listen, no one to make a deal with as the waters close over your –

“Dean!”

– brother’s face, which at the moment is about two inches from his, forehead knotted into a frown and all his moles standing out in sharp relief in the bright sun. Sam’s hands are gripping his shoulders, shaking him lightly. “Dude, where the hell did you go?”

 _When did Sam shave?_ , he thinks, blinking at his brother. “Story always gave me nightmares.”

Sam laughs. “Yeah, I think it was supposed to. Those rapids got bigger every time Dad told it – I think he got tired of me asking him if I could join the Boy Scouts, wanted to scare me off camping for good.”

“You’re kidding, right? They almost died down there!” There are times when Dean wonders if his Sammy isn’t maybe wandering around in some parallel dimension, having swapped places with this one so he could hang out with an older brother who kept Little League equipment instead of guns in the trunk of his car. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Sam steps closer, slides his hands up into Dean’s hair and angles his face up, shakes him again gently. “But they didn’t. And remember – Dad said they spent another two nights on the river, the moon was full and they hadn’t lost their supplies, so they camped out and told stories – seriously, they had a great time. Last vacation they took before –“

He’s a changeling, it’s the only explanation, Dean thinks, and he’s opening his mouth to rib Sam about the leprechauns when Sam’s eyes go wide, as if he’s just figured something out. Dean nods. Neither of them needs words to fill in the blanks: _last vacation before Sam was born, before everything went further to shit than anybody ever imagined it was possible to go._

“Yeah,” he says, “Just one more point where we could’ve screwed Lucifer and Michael out of their little bitchfest by just not showing up. But that means Bobby woulda had to raise me, and I think maybe the Apocalypse was easier in the long run.” It’s a little like thinking about having left Sam in Flagstaff, or Stanford, or hell itself for that matter: not possible. And anyways, he’s finally figuring out that Sam would never have stayed left. He puts his hands on Sam’s waist and threads his fingers into Sam’s belt loops and rocks them together. “Shoulda woulda, you know? We’re here now.”

A shriek interrupts them and Sam whips around, reaching for the gun he’s not carrying, but it’s just a couple of kids heading down the path. Dean tracks their direction and brightens. “Ice cream!” he says. He turns to follow them and Sam catches his arm.

“Ice cream, really?” he asks, and Dean stops, turns slowly, and looks up at Sam. Sam’s eyes are bright and hungry, the irises a narrow band of gray around pupils blown wide, and Dean lets himself be pulled around until he’s standing close enough to feel the press of Sam’s arousal.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says lightly. “There was this chick once, somewhere up in Idaho, had a real thing for Rocky Road…” He lets his voice trail off suggestively, and Sam smacks him, and it’s enough to talk them down for now, at least until Dean can find them someplace more private than the south rim of the fucking Grand Canyon.

*

 _Someplace_ turns out to be the Grand Canyon Ranch. Dean steers the car around a fiberglass buffalo flanked by a pair of wagon wheels. He can see a sign advertising vacancies and free HBO, and as he swings around the first curve, there’s a low-slung wood-framed building topping a slight rise. “This look okay?” he asks, and Sam nods.

Another curve and the rest of the motel heaves itself into view: a handful of cabins, a structure that looks like a barn surrounded by split rail fencing, and, close to the trees through which Dean can see the rock of the canyon, a straggling line of brightly-painted tipis.

 _Tipis_ , holy crap, what is this, 1952? He darts a suspicious glance around, but the parking lot is filled with late model SUVs. He turns to Sam with a grin.

Sam cuts him off immediately. “Not the tipi.” Dean lets his face fall and Sam rolls his eyes. “Fine, fine, whatever. But if there’s a Davy Crockett hat on the wall I am _leaving_.”

He pulls up by the office. A quick glance through the window shows him another flat screen TV, another rack of tourist brochures, another sign that undoubtedly tells him about checkout times and what it costs to use the phone, and Dean freezes. It may be motel office number _holy crap_ in a long and continuing line of motel offices, but it’s the first one where Dean going to ask for a room with one bed for the express purpose of finally, _finally_ fucking his brother.

He glances over at Sam. Sam is staring straight ahead, eyes seemingly fixed on the TV bolted over the desk clerk’s head. “No tipis,” he says firmly, lips twitching, and it’s enough to remind him that, yeah, Sam’s as far into this as he is. He bites back the smile he can feel spreading across his face and holds up two fingers in what he hopes is the Boy Scout salute.

“Dude. I promise. No tipis.”

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” is all Sam says in response, and Dean lets the grin loose and climbs out of the car.

The clerk has pink hair and a facial tattoo like a rose carved from toy blocks. She doesn’t seem to recognize the name _Richie Sambora_ , which is a point in her favor in Dean’s book.

“Queen or two twins?” is all she says, as if the answer isn’t important to anyone but him. Thunderstruck, Dean opens his mouth to answer, but when the words come, they’re in Sam’s voice, not his.

“Queen,” Sam says, crowding up behind him, and how the hell did he miss someone the approximate size of Paul Bunyan following him into the office? “Maybe something away from the road?” And Sam must be throwing her the puppy dog eyes, because she gives them a smile that wouldn’t be out of place on an old lady contemplating her first grandchild and turns around to grab a key out of the old-fashioned set of cubbyholes hanging on the wall behind the desk.

Sam takes advantage of her inattention to push closer, slipping his hand underneath Dean’s shirt and letting his thumb find the gap between Dean’s waistband and the skin at the base of his spine. Dean pushes back into the touch, surprising a faint groan out of Sam, and the girl turns around, a brass key in one hand and another beaming smile on her face.

She pushes the key across the desk and leans toward them. “Number twelve, over to the right. I upgraded you – it’s got a fireplace.”

“Thanks,” Dean says, clearing his throat when he realizes his voice sounds lower than Castiel’s. “Thanks. We’ll, ah, probably be here for a couple of days.”

Sam’s fingers tighten momentarily on his hipbone. He reaches for the desk pen and manages, somehow, to sign the register without letting on that his hands are shaking from the jolt that tiny gesture sends through him. Or that he’s harder than he’s been since way before hell. And if the heat of the erection pressing into the crest of his ass is anything to go by, Sam’s in the same condition.

“Couple days is fine, but let me know if you need the room past Friday. I got a booking on – lemme see, Saturday, yeah.” She draws a careful line through her ledger.

Three days, Dean thinks. They have three days. Then what? He looks up at Sam, but Sam just gives him a wolfish grin, scoops up the room key and Richie’s credit card and steers Dean away from the desk. “Friday’s great,” he throws over his shoulder. “See you then!”

The door bangs shut behind them. Across the parking lot, a woman leads a child toward one of the tipis. Dean can hear the kid’s laughter over the sound of the RVs and motorcycles out on the road. As far as Dean can tell, all they’re in for is the family fun they’ve been promised. And that’s rare enough in Dean’s world, and so is another thing: the ghosts are dead, the locals look happy, the fucking Grand Canyon is a crow’s mile away, and unless they hear from Bobby in the next twenty-four hours, they’re on vacation.

Vacation? Winchesters don’t get _vacations_. It says so right there in Dad’s journal, next to the part about stocking up on rock salt during turkey-brining season.

He grabs Sam’s arm, but instead of stopping, Sam tows him over to the Impala, opens the passenger side door and tries to shove him into the car. Dean braces one arm against the roofline and holds his ground. “You planned this, didn’t you?” he demands. “You totally planned this trip!”

Sam looks mulish for a moment, then steps forward again. He smells a little like the cold dry air filtering through the trees and a little like the Impala, like fast food for breakfast and worn-soft leather. He’s still hard, and when Dean rocks his hips forward, Sam makes a low sound in his throat that Dean wants to hear again.

“Yes, I planned this,” Sam says, leaning in until his lips are brushing Dean’s ear. “All except for the part where my brother would rather stand here in the fucking parking lot talking when there’s a room with a bed a hundred yards away!”

Dean turns his head and catches Sam’s mouth in a sharp short kiss. “Point,” he says, and drops onto the car’s front seat. “Drive, dude.”

Cabin Twelve is, as promised, off to the right, nestled into a stand of pine trees. Sam swings the car to a stop and nearly throws himself out of it. He’s got the cabin door open and Dean is behind him in a rush, pushing him into the room and slamming the door shut behind them. Then Sam’s hands are shoving up underneath his t-shirt and Dean shucks it and his jacket over his head and reaches for the buttons on the first of Sam’s shirts. “Too many goddamn layers,” he pants, finally fumbling them all free and pushing the shirt off Sam’s impossible shoulders. The t-shirts are next and then Sam is standing in front of him, his nipples tight in the cool air and goosebumps prickling over the muscles of his arms and chest and back, and Dean just _looks_.

Sam, this is Sam, _Sammy_ , and Dean’s on the verge of saying something that’ll seal his fate as the girl in this thing forever, so close he’s light-headed with the words, when Sam catches his eyes and very deliberately starts to undo his belt. The cheap metal buckle rattles and pulls free, and then there’s a whisper of fabric as Sam undoes the top button on his jeans.

“Holy fuck.” Dean is dry-mouthed, breath strangling in his throat. Sam’s erection is pushing at the fly of his jeans, solid under the faded denim, and Dean’s hands itch to pull the zipper down over it. He reaches for Sam’s hands and pushes them away, then drags his fingers up the line of Sam’s dick and grasps the tab of the zipper. Sam falls back against the door and Dean laughs, sliding his hand into Sam’s underwear.

“Dean –“His name is a gasp on Sam’s lips, and Dean tightens his hand on the head of Sam’s dick and start to slide it down the shaft. With a groan, Sam pushes himself off the doorframe. “Dean.” Dean tears his eyes away from the sight of Sam, hard and hot and wet in his fist, and lets them settle on Sam’s mouth. “Hey,” Sam says, and leans forward to capture Dean’s mouth in a hard kiss.

He wraps one hand around Dean’s neck and slips the other one between their hips, pulling at the buttons on Dean’s jeans. Dean hisses, tries to help, and when the last button pops loose he pushes and shimmies until his jeans and boxers slide down and Sam can get a hand on his dick. Sam’s hands are big and the gun calluses on his palm scrape and slide over the slick flesh until Dean is ready to burst with it, liquid fire running under every inch of skin he’s got. He clutches at Sam, licks into his mouth and speeds up the stroke of his hand on Sam and – fuck it, he hasn’t come this fast in years but they’ve got three days – grinds his hips into Sam’s hand and comes with a shout.

Sam grabs him and pulls him back into the kiss with a clash of teeth, tries to put his tongue down Dean’s throat, and then he’s thrusting, hard and messy, into Dean’s hand. A long shudder works its way down his back and he freezes, and then, breathing harshly, comes in a hot rush of liquid over Dean’s hand. Dean eases him through it then pulls him into a full-body hug, smiling when Sam slumps against him, the twitch of his lips against Dean’s throat the only sign he’s alive. Sam, who frowns through his dreams, never relaxes like this, and the boneless weight and musk of him in Dean’s arms is a revelation in its way.

Dean slides his fingers through the sweat pooling at the base of Sam’s spine, pats his ass appreciatively, and props him back against the door, holding him there with one hand while he reaches down and drags his pants back up. Grabbing a t-shirt at the same time, he dabs at the mess on Sam’s belly. Sam blinks down at him, and finally pushes his hand away.

“Dude, is that my shirt?” he says. “Ewww.”

Dean holds it up. “Label says _Sasquatch_ , must be yours.” He drops it back on the floor and looks around. The room is small, but the fireplace is laid with real logs, and there’s a cheerful bouquet of some kind of yellow and white flowers in the center of a small round table under the window. Most importantly, the bed is high and piled with pillows and the door’s deadbolt looks solid. Dean lets out a sigh, and slants a look over at his brother.

Sam is fumbling with jeans, briefs, two of his three shirts and one boot, and as Dean watches he nearly topples over. “Hey!” Dean says, and grabs for a flailing arm. Sam hops once and dumps the shirts onto the ground.

“Sorry.”

“No big. It’s just that taking you to the emergency room for a broken _whatever_ is going to put a serious crimp in my plans.”

Sam shakes himself loose and shuffles over to drop into the room’s single easy chair. He looks at his boots as if expecting they’ll unlace themselves, and back up at Dean through the curtain of his hair. “Plans?” he says faintly.

“Plans.” Dean walks over to the nightstand and picks up the remote, then fishes out his cell phone. “We got HD, we got access to pizza…” he pauses dramatically, then continues, jerking his head toward the bed. “And we may need to make a run out for lube and beer, but I ain’t leaving this room until we have to. You good with that?”

Sam looks like he’s considering the offer for a moment. “I got any choice in the matter?”

Dean shoves his hands into his pockets and resists the temptation to yell, _No! No, you don’t!_ He knows Sam’s walked away from less, and even if he never stays gone, Dean’s not sure he’ll make it through another set of good-byes, not now. But Sam toes his boots off and leans back in the too-small chair, and gives Dean a brilliant smile. “I didn’t think so,” he says, “but for what it’s worth, yeah, I’m good with that plan. And any others you got going, just in case you were wondering. Dean –“ his voice trails off, but the smile’s back, brighter than before, and Dean relaxes. _Sammy_ , he thinks.

His brother’s finally home. They both are.

He meets Sam’s grin with one of his own, and tosses him the keys to the Impala. “Good. I think we’re gonna need at least a twelve-pack of PBR, and for the record, don’t buy the flavored stuff.” Sam looks at the keys in his hand and starts laughing in great whoops. They finally end with him bent double, back heaving and odd muffled noises emerging from somewhere around his knees.

Dean waits until he looks up, eyes streaming. “It’s okay,” he says, meaning it.

Sam nods. His voice is firm when he finally stops cracking up long enough to speak. “I know it is, Dean. I know it is.”

 

  
_End._   


**Author's Note:**

> Weeks ago, I pulled a prompt off a comment-ficathon: _The first time Sam realized he was in love with Dean (or the other way around)._ 8400 words later, this is what I've got. Title from _Kashmir_ , which seemed appropriate. And I probably owe [this motel](http://www.grandcanyonranch.com/) an apology; I moved it a little ways east and downscaled it a little bit. And thanks to Filenotch and Telaryn for kicking my ass in beta.


End file.
